At the moment, I'm not referring to American electoral politics, at any level. At the moment (it could change…).
- A gentle reminder when choosing allies: Even if he's "our bastard," at the next opportunity he'll prove pretty definitively that he's still a bastard. (Partisan allegiance and gender immaterial.) Exhibit A: Cozying up to Stalin during the Second Thirty Years' War. Exhibit B: The Pahlevis, at any time. Exhibit C: Manuel Noriega, the US ally against the commie menace in Central America (just ignore that little drugs-and-violence side issue). Exhibit D: Ngô Ðình Diệm, and, for that matter, his successors (another prop-up-the-illusory-dominoes-no-matter-what ally). Sometimes we get to see that in real time … Exhibit E (no longer pending): Benjamin Netanyahu. The means used constrict the ends that can/will be achieved — so don't look/act so surprised that the Middle East is acting like, well, the Middle East for the last few millennia ("one bad bottle of tequila from all-out war"). I'm afraid that in the region within 1500km or so of 31°57'N 35°56'E, the present and historical leaders are almost all bastards.
When no longer in panic mode, it's much easier to see that the enemy (of the moment)-of-my-enemy (of the moment) is not necessarily a friend — especially after considering the body count and assessing collateral damage. The difficulty is the near-constant state of panic…
- It's not just in politics, either. Although I'm no fan of judging a work of art by the character of its creator(s) — purported or indisputable — it's also almost impossible to fully isolate one from the other, especially once transferees are involved. In literature, in musical performance, in recorded music, or in anything else, the character of the rightsholders and creators manages to slime in.
- Once upon a time, purported freedom of contract was the meme underlying capitalist economies. For a while, anyway, we put a small brake on that meme. (This isn't unique to the US.) Recent developments look more like backsliding.
This problem would be bad enough if just limited to labor law; some of the links in the preceding paragraph more than hint at this. The meme that "business should be able to do anything on which it can make an immediate profit without 'interference' from noncompetitor do-gooders" ignores that Adam Smith's works — the foundation of "modern" capitalism, even when not acknowledged — were in the realm of moral philosophy. Some business models are inherently deceptive, when they (barely) avoid total moral bankruptcy. And whether "moral" or not, any pretense that properly deployed deception is merely good business reduces Smith's "invisible hand" to a single finger — and you can probably guess which one.
- At least in the abstract, property rights are important; even in a (hypothetical and never-achieved) "purely communist" society in which all "means of production" are owned in common, property rights just shift to other aspects. Sometimes those property rights conflict, especially when deployed for noneconomic reasons, on both side of the dispute.
- It's not all about the Benjamins in the arts, though. Even when the creative no longer feels a need to save the world, the arts need to be placed in context.